Hit-and-run victim recovering while her family faces financial crisis

Thursday

Apr 24, 2014 at 9:18 PMApr 24, 2014 at 11:10 PM

By Kim Ring TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — If the teenager who allegedly ran down Amanda O'Malley as she walked the family dog on Belmont Street Feb. 28 had stopped, the injured woman said, she might feel differently about the driver.

But as it stands, Ms. O'Malley hopes the young man sees the inside of a jail cell — even if it's not for long.

"I want it to be enough to knock it into his thick head that it was a stupid thing to do," she said Wednesday from her family's apartment, not far from where she was left lying in the road unconscious while Julianna, a small pug dog, walked home alone and sat on the porch.

"If he had stopped, yeah of course (I'd understand), accidents happen," she said.

She was in the crosswalk near the pedestrian bridge but the flashing yellow light there only blinks during school hours. Still, she didn't see any cars coming and was nearly across the street, about to climb over a snowbank, when she was struck. Somehow the dog made it over the snow ahead of her and was OK.

In the initial days after the accident, her parents took turns sitting by her bedside in the intensive care unit at UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus, explaining she'd been struck by a hit-and-run driver every time she awoke and asked why she was there.

She was confused and fighting efforts to keep her in bed. She didn't believe she'd been struck by a car, though she remembered taking the dog for a walk, something she didn't usually do at night.

What she recalls from the early days in the hospital is that her leg hurt — both bones in her shin were broken. Almost every bone in her face was broken, too, though none was displaced.

She was frustrated. "I was mostly angry that I couldn't leave," she said.

But there were other, far more serious injuries that had her parents very worried.

"When her head hit the pavement, she hit hard," Brian O'Malley said of his daughter, 23. Doctors didn't know the extent of the head injury or whether the Assumption College senior would be able to think clearly again.

She had a cracked vertebra, the C2, and has been wearing an uncomfortable collar around her neck ever since.

Then she developed a blood clot which required drugs to thin her blood. Now she has to be careful about cuts and bruises because thin blood can mean a extreme blood loss in the event of an injury.

With a plate in her leg and another in her arm, she spent about three weeks at Fairlawn Rehabilitation Hospital where she worked with physical, occupational and speech therapists — not because she couldn't speak but because they wanted to help her process thoughts into words after her brain injury.

While she was recovering, her family was locked in a financial battle they'd been fighting for months. Her father said this week he expects the family will be homeless soon.

Mr. O'Malley lost his job selling advertising at a religious publication while his daughter was hospitalized. He's been looking for work and is filling in at the Love My Pet division of Petco, where his daughter worked and will return soon.

In some ways the layoff was well-timed because Ms. O'Malley needed care at home, but in other ways, it couldn't have been worse.

The O'Malleys were already behind on their rent and were battling with their landlord in housing court because of problems with their apartment.

Mr. O'Malley withheld rent hoping the problems would be fixed and then, when his daughter was hurt, the family needed every penny they had. The landlord is moving to evict them, he said, and that could come very soon.

Mr. O'Malley turned to social media. He set up a website, www.amandafund.us, that has a link to an online fundraising site where he hopes to raise $16,000 to help with the family's debt and to get them into a reasonably priced, three-bedroom, first-floor apartment in the Worcester area.

As of Wednesday night he'd raised $5,500, enough to start an apartment search, he said, adding that time is of the essence.

In a few weeks Ms. O'Malley will attend her college graduation, but her course work will take the summer to finish. She attends one laboratory class with a parent driving her across the city so she can sit in. The rest of her courses can be completed once she starts driving and is in better health.

She hopes to find a job in a hospital laboratory once she's finished her school work and has her diploma.

The teenager who is charged with hitting her that night is 17 years old and is, under a recently changed state law, a juvenile so his name cannot be revealed, though Mr. O'Malley wrestles with blurting it out.

He doesn't know much about the boy, whether his family is well-off or "as poor as we are."

The driver was minimally insured and Ms. O'Malley, who just wants to get on with her life, now finds herself talking with lawyers trying to recoup lost wages through the driver's insurance and grappling with whether she'll attend his arraignment Friday.

"I don't think it will make any difference if I'm there," she said. "I mean, it won't change anything. He's getting arraigned."

Contact Kim Ring at kim.ring@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @kimmring.